Aon plc
Q1 2018 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 4 May 2018

[Operator:]

Good morning, and thank you for holding. Welcome to Aon Plc's First Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all parties will be in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer portion of today's call. If anyone has an objection, you may disconnect your line at this time. I would also like to remind all parties that this call is being recorded and that it is important to note that some of the comments in today's call may constitute certain statements that are forward-looking in nature as defined by the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated. Information concerning risk factors that could cause such differences are described in the press release covering our first quarter 2018 results as well as having been posted on our website. Now, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Greg Case, President and CEO of Aon Plc.

[Gregory C. Case:]

Thanks very much, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2018 conference call. Joining me today is our CFO, Christa Davies. For your reference, I'd note that there are slides available on our website to follow along with our commentary today. Before we discuss the financial results of the quarter, I'd like to reflect on Aon overall on our decade-long mission to be the leading global professional services firm, delivering a broad range of risk, Retirement and Health Solutions, enabled by proprietary data and analytics. We have taken significant steps to evolve into the firm you see today. As you know, nearly a year ago, we completed the divestiture of our outsourcing platform, a meaningful acceleration of our proven strategy. The divestiture was just one step in our journey, but it was a step that provided a further catalyst for our actions to unlock the next wave of shareholder value, as it reinforces our focus as a professional services firm; further aligns Aon's portfolio around our clients' highest priorities; generates significant capital to accelerate investment in innovation and emerging client needs; provides a catalyst to unite our firm under one operating model, creating greater efficiency and operating leverage; and reinforces our return on invested capital, decision-making priority and emphasis on delivering double-digit free cash flow growth over the long term. Our optimism is built through our conviction that these actions will substantially strengthen our firm on the heels of a decade of industry-leading improvement and innovation for our clients and shareholders. With this momentum, we're already seeing improvement in our growth profile to provide new investment in high growth, high margin areas across our portfolio. Organic revenue has increased from 3% in both 2014 and 2015 to 4% in 2016 and 2017. Our journey continues, as we focus on driving greater innovation and more insightful content to deliver improved outcomes on behalf of our clients. Stronger growth, combined with increased operating leverage and free cash flow margin, reinforces our long-term outlook and the significant upside we anticipate in the value of our firm over the coming years. Now turning to the quarter on page 5 of the presentation. Consistent with previous quarters, I'd like to cover two areas before turning the call over to Christa for further financial review. First, our performance against key metrics we communicate to shareholders. Second, overall organic growth performance, including continued areas of strategic investment. I would also note that the financial results discussed on today's conference call and shown in the presentation slides, are all on a comparable basis year-over-year, adjusting 2017 results retrospectively to pro forma amounts which include the impact of the revenue recognition accounting change that was formally adopted as of the first quarter 2018. On the first topic, our performance versus key metrics. Each quarter, we measure our performance against the key metrics we focus on achieving over the course of the year

[Christa Davies:]

Thank you so much, Greg, and good morning, everyone. As Greg noted, our first quarter results reflect positive performance across each of our key metrics, highlighted by strong organic revenue growth in Commercial Risk and Reinsurance Solutions, substantial operational improvement and double-digit growth in adjusted free cash flow. We are continuing to drive efficiencies in our operating model and allocate capital to the highest return opportunities. As Greg previously highlighted, the financials discussed on today's conference call and shown in the presentation slides are all on a comparable basis year-over-year, adjusting 2017 results retrospectively to pro forma amounts that include the impact of the revenue recognition accounting change that was formally adopted as of the first quarter 2018. Please refer to pages 11 to 15 of the press release schedules for financials that provide a comparable year-over-year view. And similar to last year, we've provided nine quarters of comparable financials in Excel format on our Investor Relations website. Turning to slide 10 of the presentation, our core EPS from continuing operations excluding certain items increased 26% to $2.97 per share for the first quarter compared to $2.35 in the prior year quarter. Certain items that were adjusted for in the core EPS performance and highlighted in the schedules on page 11 of the press release include non-cash intangible asset amortization, non-cash restructuring charges and non-cash expenses related to pension settlement. Results included a net $0.12 per share favorable impact from changes in foreign currency exchange rates and certain hedging programs, including a $0.19 per share favorable impact from FX translation, primarily driven by a weaker U.S. dollar versus the euro, partially offset by a $0.03 per share loss on the remeasurement of assets and liabilities in nonfunctional currencies, recognizing other expense; and lastly, the prior year quarter benefited from a $12 million or $0.04 per share reduction in expenses related to certain hedging programs. If currency were to (13

[Operator:]

Our first question will come from Dave Styblo of Jefferies. You have an open line.

[David Styblo:]

Hi, there. Good Morning, and happy Friday, guys.

[Gregory C. Case:]

Same to you. Thanks.

[David Styblo:]

Wanted to just come back to slide 11. I don't think I'm quite triangulating the math quite right on the margin expansion year-over-year. So, it's apples-to-apples, you're up 230 basis points on operating margin; 160 basis points of that is from the restructuring savings. And then, I think the FX, well, it had a drag of 20 basis points. So that would have made it – that accounts for another 20 basis points. So, is the difference there of your operating margin – you know what? I think I've actually just solved my own question. Sorry about that. (26

[Christa Davies:]

So, you've got 90 basis points of margin expansion from the core, Dave.

[David Styblo:]

Yeah, yeah.

[Christa Davies:]

Does that make sense? Yeah.

[David Styblo:]

Yeah. I missed that last point there. Okay. So that's self-explanatory. As far as, as you go forward for the rest of the year and your outlook on organic growth, I know, you guys don't typically give guidance. You started the year at 3% here and you do have some tough comps in Reinsurance for the back half of the year. Management's goal has been to continue to accelerate organic growth over the next couple years here. Is that going to be hard to do this year, just given the dynamics from 2017, or do you guys already have visibility on some areas of new business wins that give you confidence that you can at least match last year's 4% or possibly even move it higher?

[Gregory C. Case:]

Yes. David, our message is consistent. But while there's a little bit of noise back and forth on the different revenue lines in the quarter, when we think about the year in 2018 and beyond 2018, we think this quarter – we view this quarter as just another quarter of on-track progression. So, if you go back and think about sort of our investments in higher margin, higher growth areas, historically, go back a few years ago, we're at kind of 3%, 3%. The last two years, we're at 4%, 4%; again, on track, sort of to continue that progress. And if you think about sort of what happened in the quarter, 13% reported, take out the FX, we're at 8% – by the way that 8% is higher than our 10-year average reported, which is at 6%. So from our standpoint, this quarter is just another step on a progression for organic growth, margin improvement and, as Christa importantly pointed out, free cash flow growth improvement.

[David Styblo:]

Okay. And then, more broadly, as you look across your portfolio in terms of maybe a matrix of both geographies and product lines or solutions, can you talk a little bit more about market share upside potential and margin expansion headroom? I'm just trying to get a sense if you're maxed out in some countries or solutions. And similarly, what areas of your business are perhaps underperforming, not quite at targets, where you see opportunity, other than the things that you're doing with the BPO cost savings?

[Gregory C. Case:]

Well, let's come back again, I'll sort of point you back to – I'll talk about sort of top line, and Christa maybe can comment on the margin piece a little bit as well. Listen, one of the things that we're excited about, we talked a year ago about the divestiture of our outsourcing business, which was yet another catalyst for the next step in the progression of Aon, both to reinforce our work as a professional services firm, it also reinforce strongly our ability to continue to bring together Aon United, how we deliver our global firm to our clients in a local way. And that means we can invest more and more in a single operating platform, a single P&L. All these things are driving greater operating leverage and are fueling the performance improvement, the operating margin improvement you're seeing. And then what we also did is broke out the five revenue lines. You could really see we're making investments and we like the opportunities across all five of the lines. In particular, areas to create net new demand. So if you think about in Commercial Risk, what we're doing in cyber to change the game in cyber, to create net new demand, real set of opportunities. In Reinsurance, we see tremendous opportunities to create net new demand with what is a truly industry-leading leadership teams. So think about what we just did or have done historically in the U.S. mortgage world in which we created net new demand in the U.S. mortgage world to the tune of $10 billion in premium. You saw us just place what is a very, very unique cat bond in the marketplace. First of its kind, for the World Bank for four countries who face quake risk they couldn't recover from in prior periods. So, these are real innovations, sort of, in Reinsurance. You're seeing the same on the Retirement side, in what we're doing with delegated, on the Health side, in what we're doing with the exchanges. And then very excited about what we're doing with Data & Analytics to, again, create areas of net new demand. So, for us, Dave, we really did see the sale of the outsourcing business as a real catalyst. And what you see in the first quarter is just the continued progress against that. But in terms of margin, Christa, anything you'd add to that?

[Christa Davies:]

Yeah. The thing I'd say, Dave, is we do see margins continuing to accelerate, and there are a number of things driving that. One, obviously, is bringing together the Aon operating model under one operating model. And you can see the progress there in terms of the savings, $165 million of restructuring savings in 2017. We're on track to deliver the $300 million of savings in 2018 and, again, on track to deliver the $450 million of savings next year in 2019. So, that's obviously contributing to margin expansion. The second thing I'd say is we are continuing to improve on the core margins of our business through great work across the whole of Aon, which is just terrific. And the third I'd say, which is really the area Greg highlighted, which is we continue to invest in higher revenue growth, higher margin, higher return on capital areas, which is building leverage into the business. And I think Data & Analytics is the best example of that. It's a very high margin business, and that is translating through the higher free cash flow growth. So, we're very excited about the future growth in revenue, margins, and free cash flow.

[David Styblo:]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question will come from Sarah DeWitt of JPMorgan. You have an open line.

[Sarah E. DeWitt:]

Hi. Good morning. The near-term goal of at least $7.97 of adjusted EPS this year, I imagine when you said it, you didn't assume that there would be $0.16 of FX benefit this quarter. So, should we be thinking about that as you can hit $7.97 this year ex-FX?

[Christa Davies:]

So, Sarah at the time of the transaction in May 2017 we gave guidance of exceeding $7.97 EPS in 2018 as you said. We're not updating guidance on a quarterly basis based on tax headwinds, FX tailwinds or frankly much stronger operating performance. We do believe we're on track to exceed $7.97 and the results in Q1 demonstrate this.

[Sarah E. DeWitt:]

Okay. All right. Thank you. And then just on the share buybacks. How should we think about the pace of that going forward, is a good proxy to think about adjusted income less dividends is being available for buybacks given that's, I think, your preferred way to deploy it, given the returns in the business?

[Christa Davies:]

Yes. I think that's absolutely right, Sarah. What I would say is if you look at free cash flow, we've got a use of cash on restructuring, we've got a use of cash on dividends and then that is essentially cash available for share repurchase, investment in organic opportunities and investment in M&A. And as you've seen, we continue to invest in share repurchase, because it remains the highest return on capital opportunity across Aon. And then the other thing I would note, Sarah, is as we grow operating income and free cash flow over the long term, you should expect that we'll grow debt to keep that debt to EBITDA in line with the ratio I outlined.

[Sarah E. DeWitt:]

Okay, great. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Arash Soleimani of KBW. You have an open line.

[Arash Soleimani:]

Thanks. Just quick question in terms of the tax rate, I know before you'd put a 19% expected rate for this year. Just curious if that changes, has changed at all based on increased clarity that you may have received in terms of the tax code?

[Christa Davies:]

Arash, we do believe that 19% is the correct rate for the full year 2018. And so, what you're really seeing is a lower tax rate in Q1 and then a higher tax rate in Q2, Q3 and Q4 to average to 19% for the year.

[Arash Soleimani:]

Okay, thanks. And I guess my next question is, are you seeing any changes in the demand for cyber especially with some of the European regulation?

[Gregory C. Case:]

Arash, as we've talked before we actually see tremendous client need sort of in this category. Virtually every client we talk to is addressing this question and it's a question of sort of at the board level, at the CEO level but also down on the operations of all of our clients' businesses. So this is an area of increasing concern for them. And as you've highlight, the $450 billion of reported loss last year there was against that kind of $3 billion in premium give or take. We are privileged to place a good portion of that. But if you think about $3 billion versus $450 billion, that's an area of substantial need and a great opportunity for us at Aon and as an industry to help our client support that. And that $450 billion, to your point, was largely U.S. based. When you think about the adoption of GDPR and the data requirements in Europe which literally kicked in this month, the reported requirements go up, which means the $450 billion is going to go into something that's closer to $1 trillion. So you're absolutely correct. This is an area of high, high need for our clients and an area of substantial opportunity for Aon which is one of the reasons we've invested so heavily behind it both in traditional ways, core brokerage and all of the things we do around that. The arrangements we've set up on behalf of clients but also with the investments we made in just content and insight, and Stroz Friedberg as an example, who have an extraordinary insight into sort of specific incidents and how they occurred, and why they occurred. And we're applying that to underwriting characteristics and criteria to create more opportunity for our clients. Q – [09QYVY-E Arash Soleimani]>

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Yaron Kinar of Goldman Sachs. You have an open line.

[Yaron Kinar:]

Good morning, Greg and Christa. Just wanted to circle back to organic growth for a second. So, if I understand your comments correctly, ultimately, we shouldn't read too much into a bit of a slowdown in the first quarter here. And for the full year, you still expect steady, if not accelerating, growth. Is that a fair summation?

[Gregory C. Case:]

Yeah. And I think you summarized it very well. There might be some noise, sort of back and forth on the different revenue lines. But, again, take a step back. Literally, we feel the trajectory continues very positively on the growth side for us, again, going back over multiple years now. Going back four years, 3% and 3% going then to 4% and 4%, we think we're on a very good progression for the year. And if you look at reported overall, as a firm, even though there was noise back and forth between the revenue lines, overall the firm were at 3% organic, 8% excluding FX reported, and 13% reported. So, these are very, very strong levels that continue to reinforce the growth trajectory of Aon. And, again, we look at this as kind of a single P&L. This is Aon overall delivering a growth top line, delivering operating improvement free cash flow growth, and that set of characteristics continues to look very positive.

[Yaron Kinar:]

Okay. And then, maybe if I dig a little deeper into organic growth, you called out a couple things there, specifically weaker project-related revenue in both Retirement and Health and also very strong growth in EMEA in Commercial Risk Solutions. So, I was just hoping that maybe you could give a little more color around the project-related revenue. And then, on EMEA, can you maybe talk about how the UK is shaping up within EMEA? Is it also a contributor, or is it just so – are you seeing some weakening there that's offset by other growth in the region?

[Gregory C. Case:]

Well, let me make sure I get (37

[Yaron Kinar:]

And can you talk specifically about the project-related revenues, both in Retirement and Health?

[Gregory C. Case:]

Well, on the Health side, it was really more around – again, as we implement major programs for clients, occasionally, there are programs that – particularly, around some of the exchange work we do that are one-time, and the conversions, and we had a number of those in the first quarter 2017, which was terrific. But again, it drove a 15% organic number in Q1. Again, if you think about we ended up 7% for the year and that's what we see progressing over time. And on the Retirement side, it was really more around, as we described, it was really more timing than a specific project and the timing was around, again, different initiatives we take on behalf of clients and how were awarded on behalf of clients that are going to roll into the second half of the year – not the second quarter, but the second half of the year, that will fully balance out. And again, no change to overall projection and views on the year in that category.

[Yaron Kinar:]

Thanks. I appreciate the color.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Elyse Greenspan of Wells Fargo. You have an open line.

[Elyse B. Greenspan:]

Hi. Good morning. My first question, just going back to the conversation on margins, you guys saw a 230 basis points of margin improvement this quarter on 3% organic. Do you view that as a sustainable level? And, I guess, what I'm also thinking about is, you guys told us there would be about – to get to the $300 million, we have about $135 million of saves for the full year. And you guys saw just under 40% of that level in the first quarter. So how do we think about the margin progression for the back three quarters in relation to just a different number of savings coming through, as well as, the 230 basis points of margin improvement you saw in the first quarter?

[Christa Davies:]

Yes. One of the things we would say, Elyse is, as we look at our revenue growth for the quarter, I know you're focused on organic, we really focus on total because M&A is absolutely contributing to top line and bottom line performance, and we're incredibly excited about the $1 billion of M&A we did in 2016 and the $1 billion that we did in 2017. And so, as we look at the 13% revenue growth for the quarter, that is absolutely contributing to margin expansion and we do expect margins to continue to expand in the second half of the year – well, in the balance of the year for full-year margin expansion. And if you think about the progress on margins for the full year, that will continue to occur as the savings ramp in the balance of the year.

[Elyse B. Greenspan:]

Okay. And that was actually – to your point on the acquisitions, that was another question I had. So really two parts, as we think about modeling is – you guys saw about 5% revenue growth from acquisitions this quarter. Can you help us just think through the amount that could come through in the balance three quarters, kind of what rolls off and when or maybe just high level? And then, in terms of margins, were the acquisitions that came through in revenue this quarter, were they accretive to your margins, meaning are they running at stronger margins than the rest of your business?

[Christa Davies:]

Yes. So, Elyse, we haven't given revenue or margin guidance from the acquisitions. What I would say on reported revenue is, if you look at the last 10 years, reported revenue has been 6% CAGR. And so, that's a pretty good way to model revenue and, certainly, the way we think about it. Obviously, we're looking at the components of that, that are driven from organic versus M&A versus FX, but 6% reported is not a bad way to think about it because it's happened over a 10-year period of time. As we think about margins, they're typically lower on a full year basis in the first year because we've got a bunch of integration costs associated with them. And so that's definitely a way to think about acquisitions as they come in. They'll contribute to revenue. They will be a little lower margin in the first year, and then obviously, for us to do M&A, it has to have a return on capital higher than buyback. And so, it's certainly going to contribute in the long term.

[Elyse B. Greenspan:]

Okay. Thank you. And then one last question, just going back to free cash flow quickly. Obviously, just some moving parts on each quarter, but the goal for the year, meaning 2018 is it still about double-digit off of the adjusted 2017, about that $1.8 billion number?

[Christa Davies:]

That is exactly right, Elyse. So, what we would say is our long-term growth of free cash flow is double digits. If you take the $1.8 billion in 2017, we will grow double digits this year. And as you think about uses of free cash flow, 2018 is the peak year for restructuring the use of cash. And so as restructuring tails off in 2019 and every year off that, you'll see free cash flow accelerate.

[Elyse B. Greenspan:]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Operator:]

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Greg Case for the closing remarks.

[Gregory C. Case:]

Thanks very much, everyone. I really appreciate you being part of the call and look forward to our discussion next quarter. Thanks very much.

[Operator:]

Thank you, speakers. And that concludes today's conference call. Thank you, all, for participating. You may now disconnect.